"Why is it taking so long?"
"What are you doing? Are you slacking off?"
Nobuaki shouted as he walked into the courtyard, then suddenly froze.
The overwhelming smell of blood and the scene in front of him made his stomach twist.
Blood, broken bones, scattered organs, torn flesh. The entire courtyard had turned into a nightmare.
Maki stood in the middle of it, holding the true steel lacerator. The tip of the blade pierced a completely mangled corpse.
The Kukuru Squad had been wiped out.
Nobuaki's legs went weak.
It had not even been two minutes.
How could this even be possible?
Boom!
The ground suddenly shook. The earth beneath Maki cracked open, and two massive stone hands rose from below, slamming shut and trapping her inside.
"Uncle Chojuro! That's Uncle Chojuro's Cursed Technique!"
"The Hei have been dispatched!"
The Hei were the real elite force of the Zenin Family, made up entirely of sorcerers with powerful cursed techniques.
Seeing Maki sealed inside the stone hands, Nobuaki finally breathed out in relief.
Crack.
In the next moment, the stone shattered.
Maki stepped out calmly, appearing right in front of him like a ghost.
"Wait…"
Slash.
Nobuaki's body split cleanly in half.
Maki slowly turned her head, then suddenly stomped on the ground and shot forward like an arrow.
Bang!
She grabbed Chojuro by the collar, smashed through a wall with him, and slammed her foot down on his chest.
The force crushed his ribs instantly. His lungs and heart were destroyed in a single blow.
Suddenly, a pair of enormous eyes appeared behind her.
Under their gaze, Maki's body froze in place.
This was Ranta's cursed technique.
Maki only sneered. She twisted her body, grabbed the two giant eyes with both hands, and tore them apart.
Rip!
"Ahhh!"
Ranta screamed in agony.
Still, he clenched his teeth, covering his bleeding eyes while forcing every last bit of cursed energy out of his body.
"Don't worry about me!"
"Brother Jinichi, go! Kill her!"
He shouted like a madman.
In his mind, Maki's figure had already overlapped with Toji Fushiguro.
"The Zenin Family is collapsing because of that man!"
"You see it, right?"
"The Maki in front of us has already become just like him!"
"Kill her!"
Ranta forced out the last bit of strength in his body just to hold her down.
Jinichi immediately seized the opportunity and jumped forward.
He threw punch after punch, and in an instant countless enormous fists appeared in the air, crashing down like a storm.
Boom!
The ground shook violently. Buildings collapsed and turned into rubble.
Blood poured from Ranta's eyes, but a relieved smile appeared on his face.
"No one can survive Brother Jinichi's cursed technique!"
"We did it!"
But when the dust settled, Maki stood there calmly.
She held the sword in one hand and Jinichi's head in the other.
Ranta never saw it. By the time Maki reached him, he had already died from exhaustion.
Maki casually threw both bodies into the pond.
"Still more left."
She walked slowly onto the wooden bridge.
On the other side, Naoya stood there wearing a black haori, watching her with a playful expression.
Naoya, the strongest member of the Hei and the most talented sorcerer of the younger generation in the Zenin Family.
"How cruel," he said with a smile.
"Do you even have a heart?"
"Of course I do," Maki replied calmly. "I'm just killing beasts. When you step on an ant, do you ask yourself if you have a heart?"
Naoya clicked his tongue.
What an irritating girl.
He rolled up his sleeves and slowly removed the heavy metal weights tied around his wrists. Then he bent down and removed the ones tied around his ankles. Finally, he took off the metal weights wrapped around his waist.
Clang.
The weights hit the ground with a heavy sound.
Naoya grinned.
The next moment, he disappeared.
Bang.
He reappeared behind Maki instantly.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Twenty-four explosive sounds echoed in a single second. His speed had reached an unbelievable level.
"To defeat you, I went through the harshest training in the clan!"
"To erase the shame of losing to you, I even risked my life fighting special-grade cursed spirits alone!"
Naoya's voice was filled with madness.
"I finally did it!"
"Projection Sorcery can push speed to subsonic levels!"
"But I can stack it twice. My speed has already reached supersonic!"
"And to make my body endure that speed, I've been wearing hundreds of kilograms of metal weights every second of the day. Even when I sleep!"
"The me now is completely different from the past!"
He laughed like a lunatic.
At one moment, his speed broke past Mach 3. The sonic boom exploded like a bomb.
Naoya suddenly turned and launched a flying kick toward Maki's abdomen.
With that speed and power, he believed he could cut her in half instantly.
"Die!"
Maki remained calm the entire time.
When the attack reached her, she casually tossed the true steel lacerator into the air.
Then her body moved.
Her speed instantly surpassed Naoya's.
"Wha—"
Before he could even react, Maki's fist smashed into his face.
Bang!
His face twisted violently. Teeth flew out. Blood burst from his nose and mouth as his body shot backward.
He crashed into a building and collapsed in the rubble.
Maki lowered her fist, then raised her hand and casually caught the falling sword.
"All speed, no strength."
That single sentence completely shattered Naoya.
All the training, all the pain, all the effort he had put in just to defeat her.
And the result was nothing more than a casual dismissal.
"Ahhhhh!"
Naoya forced himself up like a madman. His face was covered in blood, and his voice trembled with rage.
"You piece of trash!"
"How dare you look down on me…"
His body shook violently, but his eyes burned red.
"How could you…"
"You're not Toji!"
From the moment he was born, Naoya had worshipped strength.
When he was young, he had also mocked the useless person in the clan who had no cursed energy.
But the day Toji Fushiguro walked past him and glanced at him once, the overwhelming pressure had frozen his entire body.
From that day onward, Toji became the goal Naoya chased.
Later, there were even stronger monsters in the jujutsu world. Yuki Tsukumo, the strongest trio, the youngest special-grade sorcerer Yuta Okkotsu.
But that never mattered to him.
Because he believed that one day, he would reach that level too.
Yet now, Maki, the person he had always looked down on, had stepped into that world before him.
Why?
How could this be possible?
Jealousy completely swallowed him.
"You're not Toji!"
"The one who stands at that level…"
"Can only be me!"
Naoya's expression twisted like a madman as he formed a hand sign.
"Domain Expansion: Temporal Cell Moon Palace!"